The Way Death Came
by BrokenKestral
Summary: Digory's perspective of the train crash.


**Disclaimer: I'm sure this story has been done before (I've read them), and written better than mine, but it was an idea half-formed in my head while painting today, and I wanted to see it fully. The train of events and the people are Lewis's, England belongs to a great many people, and worship has always been meant for God. None of this is mine. **

"_And the Professor and Aunt Polly and Lucy came with [Jill and I]. We wanted to keep together as long as we could. Well there we were in the train. And we were just getting to the station where the others were to meet us, and I was looking out of the window to see if I could see them when suddenly there came a most frightful jerk and a noise: and there we were in Narnia" – The Last Battle_

OOOOO

There were five people in the train compartment, all laughing till the sound of their joy reached the other compartments and caused involuntary smiles. Lucy, bright and valiant queen, sat by the window, legs no longer long enough to swing back and forth as she sat, but her hands moved with the same fluid rapidity as her tone rang through the air. She was speaking about her brothers.

Next to her sat Jill, a tense excitement carried in her shoulders and in the secretive curve of her mouth. Quiet next to Lucy, expectant. Her eyes met the boy's across the way—the boy, knight*, adventurer, and quarrelsome friend who might be going back with her. Back to the place that caused her smile, back to another adventure. If only Peter and Edmund got the rings. Then she and Eustace would go. She looked at him again. He had that winding tension in his body too, his fists firmly clenched, his rigid back completely straight, even while his head nodded to Lucy's words.

The third person on the bench with Lucy and Jill was an older lady. She had common sense written in her eyes and face, her hands were folded on her lap, and her smile sparkled as she listened to the laughter, for Lucy herself was laughing, saying, "Can you imagine it, them quietly opening the door, Peter looking out, and quietly calling the coast was clear? I can see him doing it now. But then the two of them hoisting a ladder over their shoulders, and trying to tiptoe out with it?" Polly's eyes spoke of her spirit at peace as her ears listened and her mouth laughed.

The last person, sitting across from Lucy and on the other side of the window, was Professor Digory. He was old by now, but his mind still measured and picked apart and put together and _saw_ the world, even while his body ached and grew feebler. His was not the part of the adventurer; that belonged to the boy beside him.

Or so he thought.

He, the only one out of all of them, felt the change. He'd kept from long ago the alertness of a soldier, the wariness of danger. Peter and Edmund had seen it on their return. Even while he listened and laughed with the others, he remained intently aware of their surroundings, guarding this group of fellow Narnians with the might of his mind, since he could not with his body. And so it was only Professor Digory who felt the train speed up. He glanced out the window; the tracks curved ahead. Years of training allowed him a few brief calculations; there would be an accident.

The train still sped up.

A bad accident.

He looked at his fellow Narnians, the family Aslan had given him in this world. Their laughter poured forth as Lucy spoke of her brothers climbing over the wall—perhaps slipping, that would be funny—they had no idea, in their laughter, of what was coming. Should he warn them? How bad-

He glanced out again; bad enough there was a very, very small chance they would survive. He spared a moment to pray for Peter, for Edmund, who would lose so much of their family in this accident. Even for Susan, a quick prayer that grief would bring her back to her brothers. She would miss Lucy, at least.

He looked once more at his companions. Polly was looking back at him, and he smiled at her, unafraid; she smiled back, curious. He had no way of telling her without telling the others, and they were young. It was fitting that their last sounds should be laughter with family.

But he, himself, had been acquainted with death for a very long time. It shadowed his home in the sickness of his mother, and he learned to look it in the face.

That did nothing to halt its hand, but it taught him courage.

Then he had looked on Aslan's face, and since he had seen death, he saw Life.

Faster, faster, the station must be only a few kilometers ahead. He'd seen death again in the War, and it had brushed his shoulder many times. Worse were the times it tore away the hands of his friends, pulling them where he couldn't follow.

Death and he were old acquaintances. And Aslan was giving His children a last gift, Digory realized. To the young, who knew little of death—to the Queen who had defeated it over and over with the help of a diamond bottle, to the boy and girl who had faced it once underground and had been pulled back to life—to them, they would have no idea they had died. To Polly, whose common sense would accept death but who did not know it well, ignorance too was a gift.

But to him, to the one who measured and thought and saw ahead—seeing death coming was _his_ gift. And Aslan had placed him by the window.

Digory turned away from the window—he had seen what he needed to—and drank in the faces around him once more. He reached across for Lucy's hand, smiling at her surprise even as she gave it to him willingly, and grasped the somewhat uncertain Eustace's hand on his other side. Polly took Jill and Eustace's, and Lucy quickly completed the circle.

"Let's ask for Aslan's blessing on Narnia," Digory said simply. He bowed his head. "Aslan, send to Narnia those who need to go." He waited.

"Aslan, go Yourself to Narnia if that is Your will, for You set all things right," murmured Polly after him. She'd prayed out loud before.

"Aslan, uh, help that King, and help him fight," Eustace said seriously.

"Aslan, make us do better on this adventure than we did on the last one," Jill added.

"Aslan-" began Lucy.

She never had a chance to finish, for Eustace (who had a bad habit of opening his eyes during prayers), suddenly said, "Look, the station!" and began to lean forward. "Do you see-"

With a jerk and a dreadful noise, death came for them all.

OOOOO

*I am aware Eustace was never canonically knighted, but I can't see Peter and Edmund neglecting that, and some day I'd like to write the story of the ceremony in England (and possibly the discussion Peter and Edmund had about finding a sword to actually knight him with!), because it's a moment I'm sure I'll love if only they tell it to me so I can write it down.


End file.
